visit brooklyn navy yard

Brooklyn Navy Yard: Ultimate Guide for First-Time Visitors

Once a crucial shipbuilding stronghold, the Brooklyn Navy Yard is now an exciting waterfront industrial center offering mesmerizing views, immersive tours, and exciting entertainment options.

Get your tickets to visit Brooklyn Navy Yard

The Brooklyn Navy Yard i n New York has come a long way since its establishment in 1801. Once a bustling shipyard for the US Navy that lived through both World Wars, it went on to witness the filming of critically acclaimed movies like John Wick, Joker , and Spider-Man 3. The historic yard, sprawled across 300+ acres, is currently a hub of industrial and innovative activities and among the most intriguing places to visit in the Big Apple. From exploring its historic naval hospital to mesmerizing views of the Manhattan skyline , there’s plenty to do when visiting the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Background on the Brooklyn Navy Yard

The US Navy actively used the yard from the early 1800s to the 1960s to manufacture many important marine giants , such as steel ships and battleships. Later, the yard shifted gears to commercial use, and its popularity among businesses skyrocketed from the 1990s onwards. However, you can still spot some significant 19th-century structures , such as the Brooklyn Naval Hospital, Admiral’s Row, and Dry Dock 1—a designated landmark in New York City. 

Today, the Brooklyn Navy Yard is home to over 500 businesses, boasting 11 docks and piers and 60 manufacturing buildings.

Where is Brooklyn Navy Yard, and how do you get there?

The yard is located on Flushing Avenue , just a 5-minute drive from the Manhattan Bridge . If you’re traveling by subway, hop off at the York St station on the F train or the High St-Brooklyn Bridge stop on the A or C train, then take a 10 to 15-minute walk to the location. Several MTA bus lines, including B57, B48, B62, B67, and B69, have stops near or inside the yard. While driving is an option, remember that parking space inside is limited.

What to expect when you visit the Brooklyn Navy Yard?

The Brooklyn Navy Yard is bustling with people around the clock, offering endless activities and sights in the city that never sleeps. Catch the permanent exhibition, Brooklyn Navy Yard: Past, Present, and Future, at the historic Marine Commandant’s Residence, where you’ll step back in time to uncover the origins and evolution of this iconic site. Spend time admiring public art installations before heading to Building 77 for lip-smacking local dishes  and refreshing drinks. You can also attend other exhibitions and programs on handcrafting, industrial tools, woodworking, or pottery.

What else can you do when you visit?

Brooklyn Navy Yard events and tours are held in different locations and come in various themes and formats to engage history buffs, architecture enthusiasts, art lovers, and even eco-conscious folks. Hop on a bike  to explore its vast expanses or dig deep into its infrastructural developments. You can take brewery tours, attend expos, catch comedy shows, or let your hair down on party cruises.

Walking west along Flushing Avenue, you will spot exciting places within a mile. Make pit stops to soak in breathtaking city views from the rooftop farm at Brooklyn Grange , sip on artisanal whiskey at Kings County Distillery , and pick up some gourmet cheese from Wegmans.

Get your tickets to visit the Brooklyn Navy Yard .

Visiting this yard is an excellent opportunity to understand America’s journey from wars to industrialization and urbanization in a whole new way. This dynamic place is also perfect for watching New York City come alive after dark, lit by countless twinkling lights . There are also plenty of Brooklyn Navy Yard concerts and shows to satisfy your love for music, art, and the finer things in life.  

Is Brooklyn Navy Yard open to the public?

Many Brooklyn Navy Yard shows , concerts, tours, workshops, and exhibitions are open. The permanent exhibition, Brooklyn Navy Yard: Past, Present & Future , stays open from Thursday to Sunday, from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm. Restaurant hours might vary, too.  

Was any famous ship built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard?

Actually, many! This yard built and launched fighter ships like USS Arizona, USS Missouri, and USS Maine. The Brooklyn Navy Yard was a prime shipbuilding facility for the US Navy for more than 150 years. 

What can I shop for at Brooklyn Navy Yard?

The yard houses various businesses. You can shop for clothes, fashion accessories, furniture, home goods, décor accents, art objects, electronics, and more.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard is a heady mix of centuries-old legacy, industrial growth, and entertainment, offering awe-inspiring views and a unique vibe that you can’t replicate elsewhere. Besides making an economic impact worth over $2.5 billion yearly , this iconic waterfront park is excellent for exploring and experiencing history, art, culture, innovation, and gourmet delights, whether you are a local or a newbie in the city.

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The best things to do and see at the Brooklyn Navy Yard

by Shaylyn Berlew - Jun 8, 2015 1

From hosting c omplainers during Fashion Week to being  declared a national landmark , the Brooklyn Navy Yard has been getting plenty of hype lately. But unless you work here or live in the surrounding neighborhoods, chances are good you haven’t ventured to this pocket of our borough. Not unlike… almost all of Brooklyn, the Navy Yard has changed drastically in recent years. Once one of the most active military shipbuilding sites in the U.S. all the way back to the days the Revolutionary War, the Navy Yard is now a vast, urban industrial park  dedicated to sustainability . It’s home to almost 330 widely diverse businesses which employ over 7000 people. Though non-employees can’t always access the secure confines of the yard, there are still plenty of opportunities to explore it! We’ve compiled a list of things you should do and see in the Yard, as well as just a sampling of the awesome work from this hotbed of creativity and innovation.

Brush Up on History at The Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92 Arguably the best place to start learning about the Brooklyn Navy Yard,  BLDG 92  celebrates the yard’s past, present, and future. The museum here features  exhibitions  that share the history of the Yard as well as showcase the work of modern day makers. Extensive historical archives of the Yard are available for researchers, and they have lots of interesting  public programs . Admission is f-r-e-e! If you’ve worked up an appetite while absorbing so much knowledge, hit up the building’s  Ted & Honey’s Cafe outpost  — it has a balcony with great views of the Navy Yard and the city.

Let Turnstile Tours Show You Around In partnership with BLDG 92,  Turnstile Tours  offer a range of tours that look into the Navy Yard’s history as well as the various industries it supports. Some of their interest-specific tours include a look at the Navy Yard’s significant  role in WWII , insight on  sustainable architecture  and  urban ecology , seasonal photography tours, and more! The tours are available by bus or bicycle, but in the summer, how could you not do it by bike?

Check Out Historic (and spooky) Admiral’s Row Along the of the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Flushing Ave. near Navy St. is a  mysterious stretch of dilapidated mansions . Admiral’s Row, once home to naval officers, fell into disastrous disrepair when they were abandoned in the 1970s. Some of the buildings date back to the Civil War, and the crumbling, vine-covered architecture remains hauntingly beautiful. In recent years, the Navy Yard has made a few  failed attempts  to find a developer to demolish the site and transform it into a supermarket, but now the plans have finally come to fruition with the Wegmans that’s being built there . So get there and check out the houses before they’re gone.

Tour and Taste at Kings County Distillery Drink local at NYC’s oldest operating whiskey distillery!  Kings County Distillery , part of the Brooklyn Spirits Trail , crafts handmade spirits at the 115-year-old Paymaster Building here in the Navy Yard.  Their inventory  includes moonshine, bourbon, and chocolate whiskey…mmm. The distillery hosts  tours and tastings  every Saturday afternoon for $8, and their wares can be found at watering holes throughout the metro area.

With the temperature rising, so is the demand for BBQ. The distillery heeds your call for smoked meats and now has a backyard space  (open from 4pm to 10pm Fridays and 2pm to 10pm on Saturdays) where you can drink your honey whiskey while awaiting the ribs your stomach demands.

Support Sustainability at Brooklyn Grange Brooklyn Grange ‘s 65,000 sq. ft. rooftop farm at Building 3 is the largest rooftop farm in the world. The Navy Yard is also the site of Brooklyn Grange Bees, the city’s first and largest commercial apiary. Their breathtaking rooftop farm is open to the public for  various events  throughout the season (read:  sunset yoga on the roof on Mondays and Pilates on Wednesdays ), so be sure to keep an eye on their website and  Facebook  to see when you can get a chance to check it out! The Grange has a seasonal CSA program and their delicious veggies, herbs, hot sauce, and honey are available at their weekly summer farmstand, dates TBA.

Drink Wine on a Hammock. The first rooftop winery in all of New York City is in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Rooftop Reds not only sells wine, but grows the grapes that make up the wine on their 14,000 square foot rooftop. They have developed their own “urban planter system” and this summer, plan on hosting hosts various events including cheese tasting and educational tours. Come for the wine, stay for the scenery and their “hammock happy hour,” which they’re planning on starting this summer on Wednesdays through Fridays. You get to drink wine, on a hammock, on a rooftop! Doesn’t get any more Brooklyn than that.

Walk Around to catch Dope Street Art Right next to the Navy Yard, but off the beaten track enough that it’s almost a secret to most who hang around, there is an art gallery with a very distinct entrance. Pandemic Gallery  (22 Waverly Avenue) is known for having big openings, with its art gallery/studio space being filled with fellow artists and art enthusiasts. When it isn’t open you can still check out the outside of the gallery, which has a large collaborative mural featuring both local and international street artists coming together to create something you can Instagram.

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So you can’t freely walk around the area? Is it gated off? I’d like to ride my bike in and explore all the debilitated houses for my photography.

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Brooklyn Navy Yard

Navy Yard is a historic Brooklyn neighborhood since the Revolutionary War when it was first used as a major vessel-building location. It was the top federal shipbuilding facility.

After years of neglect, it has transformed into a hub for innovation, housing tech companies, artists’ studios, and modern manufacturing facilities today.

There are even dry docks, active piers, and industrial trucking and shipping that happen here to this day. There are office buildings and part of Steiner Studios, a prominent film and TV production studio on site.

Neighborhood Highlights:

• Kings County Distillery is the oldest craft distillery in the city located in the historic Gatehouse and Paymaster Building at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, visitors are welcome to visit the Gatehouse bar or join a tour of their facilities.
• Rooftop Reds is the world’s first commercially viable rooftop vineyard, cultivating vines atop a rooftop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, providing a one-of-a-kind urban winemaking experience with stunning views of the city skyline open seasonally for tastings.
• Steiner Studios is the city’s prominent film and television production facility, comprising soundstages, studios, and offices playing a key role in the city’s thriving entertainment industry as a major hub for film and television production.
• Building 92 is a dedicated museum and visitor center chronicling the rich history of the naval shipyard through exhibits, naval artifacts, and guided tours.
• Naval Cemetery Landscape is a public park, native plant meadow, and pollinator habitat with walking trails at the site of the Naval Hospital Cemetery. The site honors the naval personnel buried here and serves to preserve the maritime history here.

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Brooklyn Navy Yard

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A shipbuilding center since the Revolutionary War, the Brooklyn Navy Yard reopened in 2011, after having lain dormant for nearly 50 years. The once under-the-radar area is again buzzing with spirit, from food halls, creative office spaces and the brand-new Wegmans, an outpost of the cult-favorite grocery chain currently drawing frantic foot traffic. Make a day of your visit to the 300-acre waterfront industrial complex with a ride on the NYC Ferry, then navigate between the old and the new. Wondering where to explore once there? Kick-off your day sipping java at Parlor Coffee Roasters (but plan accordingly as the popular spot is open to the public only on Sundays from 10am to 2pm). Then, to learn cool shit about the area,  BLDG 92  hosts fascinating exhibitions on the history of the yard —you can buy a souvenir made onsite in the yard from the gift shop. If you feel like boozing after being a  Wegmaniac  all day, tap into NYC's oldest whiskey distillery,  Kings County Distillery , or hang on the roof of  Rooftop Reds , NYC's only rooftop vineyard  which  now has winter hours.

Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.

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A Guide to the Brooklyn Navy Yard

For most of my nearly 17 years living in Brooklyn, the old Navy Yard here remained a mystery—that 300-acre hulk of fenced-off land that made a straight shot between Fort Greene, where I lived, and Williamsburg, where I spent my twenties hanging out, impossible. Opened in 1806, the Brooklyn Navy Yard became one of the most important naval shipyards in the country, especially during World War II, but after the government decommissioned it in 1966, it was left largely abandoned, and closed off to the public for decades.

That started to change in recent years, as a number of projects took hold which collectively are turning the Brooklyn Navy Yard into a destination unto itself. The changes haven’t all come without controversy, in particular the demolition of Admiral’s Row, a string of grand naval officers’ homes built in the last half of the 19th century. A supermarket is slated to go up in their place.

But this enormous swath of increasingly prime waterfront real estate continues to reinvent itself even through the occasional controversy, and more attractions are on the way, with a new high-end food court and massive WeWork co-working space preparing to come online. I still can’t beeline through it to Williamsburg, but I’m holding out hope. In the meantime, below you’ll find all of the current draws at the Brooklyn Navy Yard…

This welcome center and museum is the natural starting point for any visit to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It’s also the meeting point for the Navy Yard tours that run on weekends only. The museum is enjoyable and interesting, if occasionally too broadly focused, and covers the history of the museum as well as its present function as a home for many of the city’s independent makers. A sun-drenched Brooklyn Roasting Company cafe opened recently on the first floor, and the outdoor courtyard makes for a pleasant escape from Flushing Avenue.  BLDG 92 | 63 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn | website | FREE, Bus Tours $30

The Gatehouses Bar

Kings County Distillery runs this utterly begotten spot inside the castle-like gatehouse marking the Sands Street entrance to the Navy Yard. They call it their tasting room, but that’s doing it a disservice–the space opens at 8am on weekdays and serves coffee through the afternoon, then whiskey on through the night–and anyway there’s a real tasting room inside the distillery itself. This is a bar, and a great one. Take the table inside the turret if you get the chance.  The GATEHOUSES | 299 Sands Street, Brooklyn | website

Kings County Distillery

A true craft whiskey-making operation thrives inside one of the Navy Yard old brick buildings. All of the distilling and some of the aging happens here (the rest happens at a larger warehouse in Bushwick). The copper stills, custom-ordered from Scotland, are gorgeous. Tours run every Tuesday through Sunday for $14 per person, which includes a tasting and admission to the small and quirky “Boozeum.”  KINGS COUNTY DISTILLERY | Paymaster Building, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn | website

Naval Cemetery Park

Tucked into a space across the street from an on-ramp for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway sits this most untamed of urban parks. The land, which once served as the naval hospital’s cemetery (the remains of those buried here were relocated long ago), sat empty and locked up for decades. Now it’s populated exclusively by native flora.  NAVAL CEMETERY PARK | Williamsburg Street West between Kent and Flushing Avenues, Brooklyn | Open 8am-6pm | website

Rooftop Reds

A slew of wines by the glass are on offer at this rooftop vineyard and tasting room, some more satisfactorily aged than others, but fun to taste, all of them. Wander among the grape vines toward the line of hammocks, or take one of the tables set up here and there. Even better, wander the roof with glass in hand, taking in the skylines. ROOFTOP REDS | 63 Flushing Avenue, Building 275, Brooklyn | website

Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm

On Wednesday mornings only, this 65,000 square-foot farm atop a 12-story building offers tours to the public. The views are as fascinating as the farm itself (the smaller of two run by Brooklyn Grange), which supplies local restaurants as well as a Brooklyn CSA. There are even chickens. BROOKLYN GRANGE ROOFTOP FARM | 63 Flushing Avenue, Building 3, Brooklyn | website | Tours $10

Bonus Attraction: Sands Street

It doesn’t look like much now, flanked as it is on both side by housing projects and serving as an entry point to the Manhattan Bridge and BQE, but in the 1800s Sands Street–which terminates at the Sands Street entrance to the Navy Yard–hosted the shenanigans of sailors docked in the Navy Yard. Dozens of bars entertained them there, and helped them get into plenty of trouble. The layers to this city…

News Brooklyn Navy Yard / Shipspotting / World War II

Visiting the Ships of the Brooklyn Navy Yard

By Andrew Gustafson

Since we began working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard nearly ten years ago, the Yard has become a huge part of our lives and our identity, both as a company and as individuals. We see connections to its past and present nearly everywhere we go , and we are learning new things about it every day.

We are always looking for new ways to bring the stories of the Yard to life for the public. It has been nearly 40 years since a ship was launched from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and more than 50 since a US Navy ship was built there, so shipbuilding can seem like a distant memory. We have found that actually seeing the products of the Yard’s workers is not only a great inspiration, it also helps us better understand the nature of the work that went into them. It’s one thing to talk about welders, shipfitters, caulkers, and riggers building a 45,000-ton battleship; it’s another entirely to actually see the sum of that labor and how it all fit together. Unfortunately, only a small number of Brooklyn-built ships still exist, but we have been lucky enough to visit a few of them over the years.

USS Iowa , Los Angeles, CA

Our first visit to the Brooklyn Navy Yard-built ship was in 2013. With a pair of airline vouchers from getting bumped from a flight, we went looking for a destination we could fly to for under $300. Some friends had recently move to Los Angeles, so we decided to take a week off and relax on the beach, camp in Joshua Tree, and see some sights. We ended up spending two entire days in San Pedro.

Iowa  is one of the most celebrated ships of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Built during World War II as the lead ship in a new class of battleships, she earned nine battle stars, and even carried President Roosevelt to an allied conference in 1943. Carrying the biggest guns in the Navy, Iowa was recommissioned for the Korean War and again in the 1980’s, along with her sister ships New Jersey , Missouri , and Wisconsin . An accidental explosion during a gunnery exercise in 1989 killed 47 sailors and ended Iowa ‘s career as a fighting ship. After spending 21 years bouncing around reserve fleets, the ship was brought to San Pedro on Los Angeles Harbor in 2011 and opened to the public as a museum on July 4, 2012.

Before our trip, we got in touch with the curator, Dave Way, and he rolled out the red carpet for us. We clamored all over the ship, visiting their exhibits, engineering spaces, and archives. We really got a sense of the monumental labor that went into transforming a 70-year-old, 45,000-ton ship into a sustainable, engaging, and safe attraction for the public. Read more about our visit here .

USS Saratoga , Newport, RI

Cindy and I visited Newport, Rhode Island for our honeymoon* in April 2014 – yes, we had pretty much an entirely Navy-themed honeymoon (and yes, Cindy and I are married). We visited the Naval War College Museum , stood in awe in the same classroom where Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan gave his groundbreaking lecture series “The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,” and we visited the graves of a vaunted naval family .

Admittedly, this was a ship we only saw from a distance, and did not get to go aboard. A fixture of the waterfront in Newport for 16 years had been the hulk of the USS Saratoga . Built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1956, the supercarrier spent 38 years on active duty. After being decommissioned in 1994, the carrier was towed to Newport in 1998, with the hope that it would become a museum ship in that city. Campaigns were launched, money was raised, plans were laid, but in 2009, the Navy removed it from the “donation hold” list and marked it for disposal. We saw her just four months before she would be towed out to sea and down to Brownsville, Texas to be cut up for scrap .

With the scrapping of the Independence last year and the Constellation and Saratoga in 2014, all of the Brooklyn-built carriers are gone. There is hope for Newport, however, and for preserving the history of the conventionally-powered supercarrier; the city is making plans to bring the John F. Kennedy to town as a museum (though they have hit some snags recently ).

[* Editor’s note: Cindy objects to me calling this our honeymoon. Yes, we went to Newport immediately after our wedding, but we were only there for two days, and we did all of this work-related stuff. It also rained the entire time.]

USS Ohio , Greenport, NY

While we only saw Saratoga from afar, we actually failed in our quest to see the remains of the first ship built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Laid down in 1817 and launched three years later, Ohio spent 55 years alternating between active duty, reserve, and receiving ship (a type of floating barracks). In 1883, the ship was sold to a private buyer, and the following year it was brought to Greenport, on the north fork of Long Island, where it was stripped of its copper, brass, and iron, and the remains were burned and sunk in the harbor.

In the 1973, divers rediscovered this wreck, and it became a popular diving site. It sits in about 20 feet of water just off an area called Fanning Point, where there is a small town beach. Last summer, we happened to be vacationing in Greenport, so we decided to take a little swim to see what we could find.

I should say that neither Cindy nor myself are scuba divers. We have no experience with diving or underwater archeology of any kind. So we bought some snorkels from a local toy store, consulted some information from an internet scuba forum , and headed out the beach. We did not expect to find anything – not only is 20 feet way too deep for inexperienced free divers, the water is incredibly murky, and the wreck has been largely picked clean over the decades. But we figured we were in roughly the correct area, so we made few dozen dives as deep as we could and blindly ran our hands over the sandy bottom. Nothing. But a fun afternoon.

Luckily, people who actually know what they are doing have worked to document and preserve this wreck. In 2011 and 2012, Dr. Glenn Williams of Nassau Community College and Brett Curlew conducted a research study to survey the site and recover artifacts from it. Many of these items, including metal components and pieces of timber, were donated to the Brooklyn Navy Yard Archive, and they were on view at BLDG 92 in 2015-16. You can also see the ship’s anchor and figurehead of the Ohio on display in Stony Brook, Long Island.

USS Arizona , Pearl Harbor, HI

Hawaii has always been high on our list of places to visit. We went there last month, in part for vacation, but the fact that we could also visit Pearl Harbor was an enormous draw for us as well. Within an hour of landing in Honolulu, we were at the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center waiting to take the short boat ride out to the USS Arizona Memorial .

The Arizona holds an outsized place in the history of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Completed in 1916, it was the pride of the Navy at the time. Then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt even attended the keel laying. By 1941, it and most of the other battleships in the Pacific Fleet were aging, but still useful. When the Japanese attack came on December 7, eight Brooklyn Navy Yard-built ships lay at anchor , but only Arizona was sent to the bottom, thanks to a direct bomb hit to the forward magazine. With a loss of 1,177 of her crew, it was the largest loss of life aboard any US Navy ship in history, and an event that hit Brooklyn especially hard. More than 1,000 Yard workers volunteered to travel to Hawaii to help put the fleet back together.

Visiting Pearl Harbor entails more than just the Arizona Memorial. From the visitors center, there is access to the four main attractions : the memorial itself, the submarine USS Bowfin , the Pacific Aviation Museum , and the USS Missouri . If you are planning to visit, admission to the memorial is free, but you can book timed tickets up to two months in advance (with a small online service fee), and they almost always sell out. A limited number of tickets also go on sale every day at 7am (Hawaii Time) for the following day, or you get there early for walk-up tickets. The other three sites charge admission.

Prior to the visit to the actual memorial, which involves a short boat ride, the visitor center provides excellent contextual information, both in the two museum exhibits, “Road to War” and “Attack,” and in a 23-minute video introduction. The narrative is detailed and complex, connecting the root causes of the war to Japan’s conquest of China, and its desire to seize resources for that conquest from the Asian colonies of the Western powers. The video and exhibits also provide a near-minute-by-minute account of the attack itself, and they ways it impacted the lives of the military and civilians in Hawaii. One of the highlights of the exhibits are all of the touch models for people with visual impairments.

But the centerpiece of the experience is the memorial itself. The boat ride to Ford Island takes just a few minutes aboard a Navy launch, and offers views of the memorials as well as the active military base. The memorial is situated atop the hulk of the Arizona , where you can clearly see the ship’s outline and its gun turret barbettes poking above the water from the enclosure. But more than a rusted, leaking ship, you are looking at a grave, as the vast majority of those killed remained entombed in the ship. The sheer scale of the losses aboard this single vessel is driven home in the chapel-like space at the rear of the memorial, where the names of the dead are engraved on the wall. Be sure to look at the smaller engraved panels to the right and left of the main wall – these bear the names of the men who survived the attack, but have chosen to have their ashes returned to the wreck after they die, an honor that the Navy extends them. With just five survivors still with us, soon this memorial will also be complete.

Perhaps the most evocative part of our visit was just staring into the water, where you can see oil rising to the surface, a continuous trickle that produces swirling rainbows. Roughly 2–9 quarts of fuel oil leak from the hulk daily, from the estimated half-million gallons that remain trapped in the hull; this is referred to as the “tears of the Arizona .”

While looking out, I noticed something else – we could actually see four ships of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, or at least the memory of them. Along the edge of Ford Island are a series of concrete quays that mark the position of the ships on the morning of December 7, ghostly memorials to long-departed ships. Next to Arizona was the repair ship Vestal , built in 1909, and in front was the battleship Tennessee , built in 1919; both survived the attack, but are just memories today. Further down the row sits a very real and intact ship that came into being two-and-half years after the Arizona was destroyed.

USS Missouri , Pearl Harbor, HI

We often say that the Brooklyn Navy Yard represents the bookends of American involvement in World War II. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the Arizona drew the country into the war, and it was concluded on September 2, 1945 on the deck of the USS Missouri , when Japan signed the Instrument of Surrender. We finally got to see those bookends right next to each other.

First, we want to thank the tremendous staff of Missouri for hosting us on our visit, especially director of visitor operations Frank Clay and curatorial assistant Meghan Rathbun. They were incredibly generous with their time and knowledge, and we learned so much not just about the ship, but the day-to-day operations of a battleship that has hosted over 8 million visitors in less than 20 years as a museum. Running a museum ship is really unlike any other cultural site. Ships are vast, intricate machines that also happen to be sitting in corrosive salt water. The battle for basic maintenance requires technical expertise and enormous human labor just to keep the sea at bay, in addition to requirements for hosting the public, developing programs, and building and maintaining an archive.

As an example, Meghan had previously worked for many years on another Iowa -class battleship,  Wisconsin in Norfolk, Virginia, and her knowledge of these ships was so encyclopedic that she could tell the slight differences in the positions of doors, ladders, and equipment on what were supposed to be identical ships. She also took us to their archive, where they not only have to collect and preserve materials related to the ship’s history, they also have to hoard spare parts to keep the ship in working order, as no one has manufactured needed components in decades – another common problem for historic ships.

In addition to our time meeting with the staff, we also took a public tour of the ship, the “Heart of the Missouri Tour,” which took us into spaces off limits to the general admission public. Our tour guide, Joe Kiefer, was a US Navy vet, and he did an excellent job breaking down the operations of the ship, and the jobs of the individual sailors that kept it running. Climbing into the 16-inch gun turret was especially fascinating, as we could see the enormously complex machinery that loaded and fired these gargantuan, 2,700-pound shells.

But throughout the ship, the “ship art” – cartoons, maps, slogans, and signage painted by the crew – was one of the highlights. While many historic ships try to capture the most important moment in history – in this case, World War II – the Missouri is committed to portraying the full career of the ship, and their reference point for interpretation and preservation is not 1945, but 1991, when the ship completed its last mission: the 50th anniversary commemoration at Pearl Harbor. As a result, this ship art, which mostly dates from the 1980’s, plays an important role in evoking that moment in time.

Brooklyn Navy Yard Tours

Turnstile Tours offers Tours of the Brooklyn Navy Yard every weekend, including theme-based tours on architecture, urban ecology, manufacturing, and history. All tours are offered in partnership with and begin at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92, which offers free admission to three floors of exhibitions on the Yard’s past and present, and a host of special events and programs.

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Meet our team: sustainability guide doug chapman.

Meet Doug Chapman, head of Sustainability Programming and leader of our Sustainability Tours of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

• Architecture
• Brooklyn Navy Yard

Pouring Concrete: The Brooklyn Navy Yard Prepares for War

Times of war have always brought the biggest transformations to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and none were bigger than those that took place during World War II. But long before …

• World War II

Merchant Mariners, Unsung Heroes of World War II

While developing our new tour about the World War II history of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, we encountered a fascinating – and largely untold – history of the oft-forgotten service …

• Brooklyn Army Terminal

Private Events + Film Shoots

Iconic views. historic sites. modern innovation. the yard offers an experience that is unlike any other on the brooklyn waterfront., building 77: large-scale events, conferences, and expos.

Ideal for groups of 150 to 1500, Building 77 offers a state-of-the-art food manufacturing hub, expansive ceilings, modern industrial design, an open floor plan, outdoor forecourt, a loading area, and parking.

Building 92: Small to Mid-Size Meetings, Training's, and Social Gatherings

Ideal for groups of 5 to 200, Building 92 offers multipurpose floor plans, a suite of office furniture tables and chairs, wall and electrical outlets indoors and outdoors, access to projector and presentation equipment, design features such as USS Brooklyn mural on façade and reclaimed teak picnic tables, and the permanent exhibition “Brooklyn Navy Yard: Past, Present, and Future.”

Film and Photo Shoots Around the Yard

From the waterfront to raw spaces, the Yard offers a backdrop unlike any other: 400+ businesses, 300+ acres, 200+ years of continual use, 60 manufacturing buildings, 11 docks and piers, and 2 iconic skylines and waterfronts.

Inquire about booking space for your event

Thank you for your interest in the Yard. Our events manager will follow up with you to discuss your special event. Please allow 2 to 3 days for a response.

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